Principal Backend Architect, Cortex Platform

Jobs Paloaltonetworks; California; On-site; USD 147,000 - 238,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Principal Backend Engineer to join the Cortex backend engineering group. You will help build and scale the Cortex Platform, contributing to products like XSOAR, XDR, and XSIAM, while shaping shared infrastructure for thousands of customers.

You will lead full-stack backend efforts, mentor teammates, and drive architectural decisions in a fast-paced security-focused environment. The role emphasizes production readiness and innovative problem solving.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience developing scalable server-side apps.
• 7+ years hands-on Go and/or Python programming.
• Experience with major cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, Azure).
• Proven microservices architecture experience.
• Strong CS fundamentals and distributed computing knowledge.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end backend feature development from design to maintenance.
• Collaborate with peers across teams to integrate solutions.
• Participate in code reviews, design reviews, and architecture decisions.
• Maintain production-first mindset with real-time issue mitigation.
• Explore new technologies to scale and improve Cortex Platform.
• Design elegant, scalable, maintainable backend services.
• Mentor junior engineers and share knowledge.

Skills

Backend engineering

Go

Python

Cloud platforms

Microservices

Distributed systems

Education

Bachelor/Master in CS

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

Serverless

BigQuery/Elasticsearch

Job description

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Principal Backend Engineer to join the Cortex backend engineering group. You will help build and scale the Cortex Platform, contributing to products like XSOAR, XDR, and XSIAM, while shaping shared infrastructure for thousands of customers.

You will lead full-stack backend efforts, mentor teammates, and drive architectural decisions in a fast-paced security-focused environment. The role emphasizes production readiness and innovative problem solving.